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07/24/2026
“Missoula This Week” is reported and written By Katie Fairbanks. Send your Missoula news and tips to [email protected].
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The statewide voluntary program would help advance local clean energy goals
The city of Missoula and Missoula County are set to move forward with their proposed green power program, a significant step toward a joint goal of transitioning the community’s power supply to 100% clean electricity, officials said this week.
The program, also known as a green tariff, would allow NorthWestern Energy customers statewide to voluntarily subscribe to clean energy from a renewable energy source in Montana. The agreement the local governments are set to approve Monday is the last step before the communities and NorthWestern will submit the program to the Montana Public Service Commission for review.
“I’m just thrilled that we’re at this point where we’re one step closer to delivering sustainable energy and energy choices to our constituents and able to meet our community’s green energy goals,” Mayor Andrea Davis said during a Missoula City Council meeting Wednesday.
The City Council Wednesday preliminarily approved the agreement, which outlines the roles and responsibilities for each community and NorthWestern in bringing the program to the Montana Public Service Commission and the process for soliciting proposals to design the project. The council and the Board of County Commissioners will vote on the agreement during a joint meeting at 6 p.m. Monday. The Bozeman City Commission unanimously approved the agreement Tuesday.
In 2019, the city and county set a joint goal of powering the Missoula urban area with100% clean electricity by 2030. The green power program is the most significant opportunity available to governments to meet that goal, bringing the community about 10% closer to 100%, said Anne Geiger, the city’s strategic initiatives manager. The community is a little under 60% of the way to its goal now, Svein Newman, Missoula County’s climate action program manager, told Montana Free Press. The city and county, along with the city of Bozeman, have been working on establishing the statewide green power program since at least 2018.
As of 2023, 30 states had utility green tariff programs, with some offering more than one, according to the Clean Energy Buyers Association. Shannon Anderson, the city’s energy specialist, said this type of program is common because it works.
“This is proven to be a very strong approach to drive the buildout of new renewable energy resources, especially among commercial and institutional buyers who are intentionally choosing to purchase clean energy,” she said.
Newman told the council it’s unclear what type of renewable energy resource will be built for the program, but it will be capped at 50 megawatts. A 50 megawatt wind farm, for example, could power about 20,000 homes, he told MTFP. NorthWestern would own and operate the resource, located in Montana, and local governments and commercial or industrial businesses would subscribe to it, Newman said. Residential customers could subscribe annually if their local municipality authorized it under its own subscription, he said.
NorthWestern would pay the upfront costs, and subscribers would pay a share of the renewable resource’s cost over time and receive the market price of that power as a credit on their bill. Newman said it’s too early to say what the program’s rates would be; however, the program is self-contained, meaning no one who did not voluntarily subscribe is subsidizing or being subsidized by it.
Charles Lane, NorthWestern’s director of regulatory affairs for Montana, told the council one of the primary objectives of the program was to make it self-sufficient to demonstrate to the PSC that there are no cost shifts
“At its core, the green power program really is about customer options,” he said. “This has been a long, but thorough, process to get where we are today, and I think this reflects a clear interest in having additional opportunities for our customers, including communities, commercial, industrial customers and also residential customers within those communities to advance sustainability objectives.”
The agreement sets the date to file the program proposal with the Public Service Commission as on or before Sept. 15. It’s unclear how long the PSC review will take, Geiger said. If the PSC approves the proposal, the communities will have 180 days to recruit eligible customers who would submit a notice of interest to NorthWestern Energy, she said. Several steps would follow before the city and county would decide whether to purchase energy through the program and before the project is built, Geiger said.
Several city council members spoke in support of moving the program forward after years of effort.
“I think this is a really smart move for us, joining the rest of the states around the country that have this program and several that are already expanding this because of its success,” Council Member Eric Melson said. “This gives people the freedom and the choice. We’re not mandating this for anybody, but it does give them the opportunity and the option.”
Public Notice
Missoula County staff members will present the preliminary fiscal year 2027 budget to the commissioners at a public meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 30. Residents can attend the meeting in the Sophie Moiese Room at the Missoula County Courthouse or virtually via the link on the agenda that will be published ahead of the meeting.
Last year, the commissioners approved a budget that increased property taxes by 8% to help fund wage increases and cover lost revenue and increased costs for the jail.
The commissioners have preliminarily approved $867,400 of the $1.4 million in ongoing requests from departments and $380,470 of the $460,670 one-time requests, according to the county website. The commissioners also preliminarily approved $1.2 million of the $6.9 million in capital improvement project requests. The ongoing requests would be funded by new or existing property taxes, while the one-time requests and capital improvement projects would be funded from reserves or other revenue. All of the requests are listed online. The approvals are not final until the commissioners hold their final budget hearing and vote Thursday, Sept. 3.
3 Questions For
Kallie Moore, who manages the University of Montana’s fossil collection, is bringing her passion for the prehistoric to a wider audience. Since 2017, Moore has co-hosted the PBS YouTube series “Eons,” exploring the history of life on Earth. Starting next week, the new series “Eons: Life and Death on Pangea” will air on the PBS Eons YouTube channel, the PBS app, PBS.org, and on select PBS stations. The series explores the Permian period, the largest mass extinction of all time and what came after. The first two episodes premiere on July 29, followed by episodes airing on Aug. 5, Aug. 12, Aug. 19 and Aug. 26.
Last week, Moore spoke to Montana Free Press about the show and the benefits of exploring the Earth’s history. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
MTFP: What is the new series about?
Moore: Most of the series is about the Permian Period, which goes from roughly 300 million years to 252 million years ago, but the first and last episodes kind of bookend it. So we kind of set the stage, and then we also let you know what happens after the Great Dying, the largest mass extinction of all time. … By scaling back a little bit, we were able to kind of talk about how Pangea formed, the ecology across the supercontinent, the critters that lived on it and then this kind of up-ramping to the mass extinction event. So we were definitely able to set the stage, showing you what it was like before, what we think of the causes, what was the outcome and then we leave the viewers on a high note with recovery, so we don’t just leave you with, ‘Yes, 80% of life on Earth is toast now, OK bye.’ We set the stage for the Mesozoic afterward, that’s the age of reptiles when dinosaurs evolved. …
People are going to meet an interesting cast of characters in this series, because the Permian, it’s weird. It’s kind of the first time terrestrial life ever got really big. Terrestrial life started to diversify, different parts for different functions, different teeth for different foods. There are a lot of things that we almost take for granted as being animal characteristics that actually show up in the Permian period.
MTFP: What can we learn from things that happened so long ago?
Moore: Understanding the past definitely can inform you on where we’re headed in the future. Seeing how life recovered, survived, the largest mass extinction of all time gives us an idea of how life might do that again. … One of the main factors of the Permian mass extinction event is large volcanic eruptions that wreak havoc on the global climate. That may sound very familiar, although instead of in our modern world having massive volcanic eruptions, we have massive fossil fuel usage. …
A lot of climate researchers do use the Permian extinction event as a proxy of what’s happening currently. And right now, under worst-case scenarios, we are on track for potentially a Permian-size extinction event. Goodness, I hope we can rein in our fossil fuel usage before that, because there’s most definitely a lag between the fossil fuels we are currently releasing today and when they actually affect the climate. … Eventually, it will affect people, so we’ll have to make a change.
MTFP: Why is it important to share this information with a broad audience? What do you hope viewers get out of the show?
Moore: Getting people excited about the past, getting people comfortable with deep time, that can be like space, it can give you a little bit of an existential crisis, you know? So I can understand people’s hesitancy about diving into the deep past. It also de-centers humans as well. I mean, we are a blip at the moment. Dinosaurs, for example, were around for 140 million years. … Us Homo sapiens, 300,000 years. So again, I hope to get people a little bit more comfortable with all of this past life, all this past time. But also just highlighting some of the cool stuff that has lived on our planet, being able to look back in time is almost like looking at alien worlds. …
For me to be able to share my enthusiasm and the results of decades of study, having an outlet to the world for all of that information is just wonderful. I don’t anticipate that every single person who sees this show will want to become a paleontologist or a climate scientist or whatever. But I hope that it will inspire some curiosity, inspire people to maybe go to the used bookstore and pick up a book on ancient life or read a book on evolution and become more comfortable with deep time, evolution by natural selection, these foundational scientific theories that support our knowledge of our planet.
Might be Fun
Front Step Community Land Trust is holding a “Free the Northside” Block Party Sunday, July 26, on North First Avenue near the pedestrian bridge. The event is a celebration of the past, present and future of Missoula’s historic working-class neighborhood. The block party runs from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and will include music, storytelling, free food, community organizing, kids’ activities and more. The new short documentary film, “From the Ground Up: Restoring a Neighborhood, Reclaiming Its Future,” about the history of the Northside neighborhood organizing that led to the rehabilitation of the White Pine Sash mill site, will be shown at 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. at Leaf and Quiet Underground.
The second annual IndigiPalooza MT: Indigenous Arts & Storytelling Festival is returning to Missoula next week. Hosted by the Missoula Public Library, Chickadee Community Services and other community partners, this year’s festival will feature artists, writers and musicians from across Indigenous communities, including keynote speaker Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of “Braiding Sweetgrass.”
The festival runs Friday, July 31, through Sunday, Aug. 2. Opening Friday, programming will center on the festival’s theme, Resistance 250+, exploring how Indigenous peoples have resisted, survived, adapted and thrived for more than 250 years. Saturday will include a full day of presentations, panel discussions, live music and an Indigenous art market. Kimmerer’s keynote presentation is at 7 p.m. at The Wilma. Those interested can register for Sunday’s event with the Montana Natural History Center and Kimmerer at the Native Plant Garden at Fort Missoula. All events are free, and the full schedule and presenter lineup are available on the festival’s website.